All the "unlimited wireless" services I've tried are not worth $60 a year. If the speeds and reliability weren't so vastly inferior to home connections, and companies stopped charging extra for tethering, then I might consider it.

It really needs to evolve like dialup Internet did, going from an hours/month billing plan to true unlimited, then to how broadband and other consumer level high-speed Internet came in. Providers need to get off their butts and build networks that'll take it, then just make that the plan. Don't get their panties in a wad because 0.01% of users are going insane, they're just a drop in the bucket.

not enough wireless spectrum can be balanced with more cells emitting less power. There is more cells but no more overlap between them since they emit on fewer areas.

The real issue these days is "how do I convince those buildings that a cell tower on their rooftop is no health threat". Because in urban areas it becomes more and more complicated to be allowed a cell tower where you need it.

From the carrier's perspective, that's still tethering. They don't particularly care whether the connection to your laptop/desktop is made through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IrDA, or a USB cable, only that it's connected at all.

My home connection is far inferior to any data plan. If I get more than about 30 feet from the base it drops the call and wont reconnect until after i physically go to the wall and put the antenna back in a little hole in the wall.

My wife pays $25 for "unlimited" data (2.5G at full EVDO revB speed then throttled to 1xRTT speeds), unlimited texts, and 300 voice minutes a month. Overage voice minutes are just $.10. This deal's no longer available but despite it being a no contract service they have grandfather her in at that rate. You can get almost the same deal if you go with an iphone and use a credit card to auto pre-pay each months service ($30). There are no additional fees beyond local sales tax if any. You'll need good Sprint service where you live to take advantage since VM plans don't roam.

This. Have a VM Optimus V on the $25 plan, and though the phone/data speeds aren't the greatest, I enjoy not having to deal with the crap that AT&T and Verizon are giving their customers now. 300 minutes gets to be a bit tight sometimes, but I just found the free Vonage app that I can use to make calls over data for free.

There hasn't been true competition in the wireless market for ages. The FCC regulates it, the federal, state and local governments give big bucks to companies to "update" their telecommunications equipment (which only helps the established companies), etc.

In case anyone isn't aware, Verizon Math [blogspot.com] refers to a situation in 2006 where a Verizon customer service rep quoted the data rate as.002 cents/kB. In fact, it was $0.002/kB, which is two orders of magnitude higher.

I see this all the time in places such as coffee shops: "Extra shot.50 cents."

Unlimited? At what speed? With what kind of reliability? With what kind of coverage?
I can give you an unlimited plan for $5, but it's going to be slow as shite compared to what I could provide with $50 per month.

I'm going to assume a fellow slashdotter would know what unlimited ACTUALLY means and therefore $61 is incredibly cheap for unlimited data especially over a service which has limited bandwidth as it's shared over a spectrum - if every customer had unlimited AND used unlimited - even with huge backbone links to the telco it would still slow to a crawl.....

The Australian liberal party keep trying to put down the Australian labour party because of the national broadband network (fibre) because "wireless will soon catch up anyhow" - in a clear display of not understanding how the technology works in the slightest.

In Australia my workplace pays $22 per month for 600mb. Yes, 600mb of 3G data per month. - Mind you it's with the best telco in the country - I get coverage Australia wide and the speeds are genuinely quite reliable.

Wireless should not be used for downloading movies, watching 60 minute HD youtube clips or whatever else. You should NOT be streaming internet radio, over 3G all day long to your phone, it's absoloutely and utterly in-efficient, you're polluting the damn airwaves using a completely illogical method of getting data to yourself. Use 3G wisely and it will perform well. Abuse it and expect to be charged insane amounts of money and or have poor performance.

I do think $22 is a bit steep for 600mb but I think say $10 for 1gb would be absoloutely fine and reasonable pricing.Would I like to see it cheaper? You're damn right I would but I'm realistic and understand how the technology works and how much it costs to deploy.

You should NOT be streaming internet radio, over 3G all day long to your phone, it's absoloutely and utterly in-efficient

So if someone wants to listen to music other than the music that the major labels pay the FM stations to play, how should he more efficiently listen to such music while away from fixed line broadband? I suspect your answer to the previous question involves buying singles or albums while on fixed line broadband and then loading them onto the internal storage of a portable music player. If so, then how should someone more efficiently discover such music in order to buy it?

So you would like to listen other than 'pop' music while away from fixed line broadband, I can 100% understand this - I don't listen to much music to be honest - but I certainly don't listen to pop music.

Firstly, unlike the moron who replied to you I'm not a luddite.

What I would (and do) is KEEP A COPY OF THE FUCKING ALBUM on my mp3 player. Generally they are about 150mb. Considering I have 48gb of storage in my Galaxy S3 - I can afford to carry around at least 100 albums with me, without even batting an eyelid.

I maintain you should NOT be streaming, all day long over 3G services. It's inefficient and 'noisy' airwaves can't carry unlimited data - it's simply not how it works. You want to stream all day - get a fixed line. You're away from a fixed line - take some with you.

Do you demand that the water company constantly run a hose to your vehicle so you can have water on a road trip / camping? or you know - do you take a quantity of water with you?Seriously here.

how should someone more efficiently discover such music in order to buy it?

KEEP A COPY OF THE FUCKING ALBUM

Streaming is advertiser-supported, but keeping a copy costs real money. I can't afford to keep a copy of every album ever released. So how should I discover which albums I want to spend money on keeping?

Do you demand that the water company constantly run a hose to your vehicle so you can have water on a road trip / camping?

I agree with you that unlimited is not an acceptable plan anyway. We should pay for usage. I don't want to pay the same rate as a user who spends all day long watching movies on his iphone when I hardly use more than 300 MB. I think we should pay for usage. They should also give volume discounts, so if you use 100MB, it should be $1.50 , if you use 1 GB, it could be something like $10, if you use 2 GB, it is only $18, and if you use 10 GB, it should be maybe $60.

I don't care one bit whether companies are getting "fair" prices for their products, even if they're doing fire sales and losing money. I'll just buy as cheap as possible. Likewise I don't expect companies to care one bit about "fair" prices either, they'll charge whatever the market can bear and if that means obscene profit margins they'll take it. What you get from this is nothing but a feelgood number, a price we'd think is nice while not being totally unreasonable like saying we want infinity speed with no caps for $0. But if the market offered that, I'd take it. Of course you can guesstimate a little say "this is where the market would have been with high competition" but it's still not about "fair".

My employer was paying for an iPhone 4 since it was basically an electronic tether, but when the contract ended, they announced they were not longer paying for the phones. They allowed us to take ownership of them, but we'd have to get our own plans. The least expensive plan I could find through AT&T was $60, $40 for voice & $20 for 300 MB data, no text service included. Any text I sent or received would cost $0.20. This struck me as a little expensive so I started looking around and found this [straighttalksim.com]. Allegedly, they do start to pester you if you use more than 2 GB of data, but I never come even close to that because I'm almost always somewhere that there is a Wi-Fi connection.

I swapped out my SIM, registered the phone and restarted it. Voice & text worked right away. I had to go to this site [unlockit.co.nz] to get a new certificate to change the APN. After another restart, data worked. The last monkey-wrench was getting MMS working, but I found a work-around for it here [howardforums.com], which involved simply modifying some XML files in a backup, and then restoring the phone from the backup.

Of course, you could simply get the phone unlocked by AT&T, but that would have cost me $18 to transfer the phone to my name, and I'd also need to pay for a month of service through them for $60, which I would not need. I would have jail-broke the phone, but I plan to upgrade when iOS 6 comes out.

They allowed us to take ownership of them, but we'd have to get our own
Do they still expect you to answer the cell phone when they call? If so, did they give you a raise since they reduced other parts of your benefit package?

I recently picked up a 10GB/month mobile hotspot plan for $80 a month (technically an LTE plan, but I have nothing but EVDO in my area). And yes, I shopped around - In a few niche markets I could have done a bit better, but basically all the major carriers came out in the same ballpark.

I see a lot of people posting their rate in Euros, so yeah, we all know the US ranks right up there with your average 3rd world country when it comes to telecom infrastructure; But the poll asks dollars, so presumably targets an American audience.

So... Someone want to enlighten me as to where I can get something approaching unlimited (hell, even the crappy 10GB I get now) for the currently winning answer of "$21 to $30" a month???

I answered $61 or more. Across most of the country, *cable* internet with no data cap and speeds on the order of 5-15 Mbps are generally $40-$60.

Wireless is a whole other ballgame. 3G data speeds in most of the nation on most carriers are pretty crappy. 4G speeds are mostly pretty good, but only because there aren't a whole lot of people on them.

Actual unlimited wireless data should be expensive. It's expensive to provide and it's a shared space. It's literally financially impossible for carriers to provide significantly more backhaul and bandwidth across the country at the current rates, and this poll shows that people want *lower* rates than they're paying.

Well of course they want lower rates. If Verizon gave us truly unlimited data for $30 a month, wireless data usage would go through the roof and towers across the country would be absolutely crippled. They would not have the money to upgrade all their towers to give good speeds. Period, end of story.

Wireless data is *expensive*. It should not be priced on par with cable/DSL.

Few here would possess the knowledge required to gauge fair price. Fair price must depend on what it costs to actually provide the service and without knowledge of what those numbers are it is near impossible to determine.

I live in a population center so my monthly data use is very cheap to provide. It can't be "fair" that I pay as much as those who live in the countryside, thus subsidizing their data plans. However, my choice of operator was influenced by my research on which one had the best network coverage (I want to be able to use the data if I visit countryside, though I rarely do). It can't be "fair" that those who live in the countryside have to pay the full cost of having a network there.

Cost per customer for operators also includes cost of acquiring the customer, which includes marketing. I would have went with the same operator (due to the previously mentioned network coverage) with or without marketing, so it can't be "fair" that I pay more to subsidize the marketing to acquire other customers. Then again, operator acquiring and profiting from those customers allows it to invest in improving the service, which I benefit from, so is it "fair" if I don't participate in the cost to acquire them?

It's really difficult to determine fairness based on how much you cost to the operator and how much you must pay.

And that's part of the point. How do you judge what is fair? The poll seems to suggest we base fair on some abstract notion with some imagined cost to the carrier. There is almost an implicit suggestion that fees are 100% profit for carriers and thus they should be able to provide service for free.

In France we have now Free Mobile : 30â a month, no bandwidth cap, no limitation on web access. Right now, only TCP and IPv4 is available, that will probably change once they have finished setting up their own network completely (right now they have bandwidth exchanges agreements with another cellphone company)

Unlimited means that you could resell your bandwidth and make infinite money, given some hacking and engineering skills.

How about we charge like we do for utilities? You pay for what you use, but it is so cheap you don't have to worry about it, and the pricing is continuous (ie none of these sudden $25 jumps in monthly costs). At the same time, there is an incentive not to use an infinite supply of a limited commodity. Further, the company gets paid according to use, so they have no excuse not to build their infrastructure to handle legitimately growing demand.

Yeah, if the choice is between Coke and Pepsi...Seriously, fuck wireless companies. I want the public to seize the wireless carriers' ill-gotten spectrum and use a decentralized system with infrastructure provided by individuals. We'll work out a fair "price" that way, and it will be a lot less money than the 2-year contract so many customers are currently forced into.

But it's not important to be 8mbps cutting-edge coverage. 100kbps would be acceptable for a truly unlimited. That's theoretically 260GB a month but if connections were forcibly dropped after, say, 20s the risk to runaway use is pretty effectively mitigated. So on that "unlimited" plan you could get maps, email, most web, social media, etc, but effectively no streaming AV.

Of course the details will vary, but the point is that I'd sooner accept a limit on speed than total transfer.

My phone plan is monthly.I pay $139 a month for "unlimited" "aDSL".I put both in quotes since my ISP is DOA much of the time, perhaps 10% to 20% of the time we have no service. It also runs a lot slower than they claim. But, they have a monopoly so we have to pay it. Such is life.

Better idea: charge a fair amount for a FIXED number of bits and let me do whatever I want with them for no extra charge. FaceTime, VOIP, Tethering, Hotspot... if I'm paying for the bits, deliver them, and don't worry where they go or what they do once they hit the phone.

I'm amazed and pleased that we're FINALLY getting shared data plans. Next up: 1) rollover data, and 2) quit charging per device. I will pay you $X for Y GB and you let me put them onto ANY device I own that will connect to your network. Maybe limit me to 15 or 20* to make sure I'm not starting my own ISP, but other than that, LEAVE ME ALONE.

It has always amazed me how you can get a ton of voice minutes cheap, PLUS unlimited free nights, weekends, and mobile-to-mobile or friends-and-family, but as soon as you want IP data--a different flavor of bits, and one with LESS strict real-time needs, at that--it's OH NOES WE NEED TEH MONEYS!!!!!11

Pretty much everything else I use (electricity, water, gasoline, food) I pay for based on how much I use. You know what else all of these have in common? The electric company, water company, gas station, and grocery store DO NOT TELL ME WHAT I'M ALLOWED TO DO WITH WHAT I BOUGHT. I much prefer that to "unlimited" with strings attached--the same way I don't like All You Can Eat buffets, which always disallow sharing or taking home food. LET ME PAY FOR WHAT I USE. PERIOD.

* Really: if I own, say, a phone, tablet, and laptop, and so do a few others in my family, it's not hard to go past a dozen 3G or 4G devices.

I don't *WANT* unlimited data. And the question should be invalidated because NOBODY really should want it, since the term "unlimited" is undefined in a relativistic sense. Your "unlimited" vs Google's "unlimited" are two entirely different things. Much less, the average -consumer- vs average -business- user likely has different data usage needs.

Instead, the question should be two fold: what do consumers consider a *reasonable* price and what do we consider *reasonable* data usage for that price. Clearly the providers have done a HORRIBLE job at defining both parameters. So we should step up and at least give them a reasonable target.

To get things started, I'd like to see at least three tiers for individuals (unlike the "Unlimited Messaging or BUST!" craze taking over America): 250MB, 1 GB, 3GB. My price points would be $10, $15, $30. The $15 and $30 tiers would include WiFi tethering if the device has the feature. Customers should also be able to purchase blocks of data (based on their tier size and price) that then roll-over, with a 90 or 120 day expiration.

Why do I price the $15/1GB tier in such a way? To promote LESS data usage, but within REASONABLE limits. 200/300MB is too small for active smart phone users who aren't on WiFi pretty much full time. So that price is pretty much for the people who are stupid cheap and probably aren't using their devices ANYHOW, they're just forced to get a data plan. It is a throwaway plan. The carriers have already decided that 2GB is a max, they want users to use less than that (and the "3GB" plans are throttled joke, just a way to push users off "Unlimited"). But if data usage is too HIGH, we need to carrot-and-stick users into using an amount of data better for everyone. And considering the "average" usage in the US is about 800MB, I think we should promote keeping to that for the time being until usage patterns change or the carriers step forward and stop complaining about "bandwidth shortages".

(Oh, and as an aside, something I have *YET* to see mentioned by the tech rags: the "unlimited talk and text" thing is a result of the carriers getting us primed for LTE Advanced rollout, where voice gets shifted from circuit-switched to packet-switched VoIP. They *have* to get us paying for each voice-capable handset by then, since then the average consumer will finally see how little "data" their calling really required.)

In Jamaica they have an unlimited wireless plan for $40 USD per month with no contracts. They will even sell you a dlink router to plug your SIM card into so that you can share it around the house. Coverage is everywhere but deep in hill country. The only thing that is expensive is hardware due to Jamaica having huge import tariffs along with huge shipping costs. Why is it that Jamaica has better telecommunications than the US or Canada?

Don't give me that spread out population crap that we get in Canada. Coverage with most telcos in Canada is horrible outside cities and major highways. Jamaica has many areas with few inhabitants and still great coverage ringing the whole island along the coast. Also keep in mind that Jamaica is a very corrupt country where it is hard to find highly skilled people so in theory installing a modern communications system should be harder and more expensive than in North America. Maybe the CRTC/FCC are more corrupt than a banana republic.

In Sweden I pay SEK 69/month for unlimited wireless on top of a prepaid plan ($10/month). I think this is too much though as I remember an Ericsson presentation saying that mobile data costs is in the single-digit cents per GB. It is a very profitable business.

Sweden has some fairly high-density population centers and a lot less suburbia, from what I saw on the train from the airport. I am willing to pay a fairly high price for genuinely unlimited data, or even a large amount of data that's not restricted, but if I can't do VOIP, then the value drops substantially.

In actual transmission costs the data is cheap, but operators put many billions per year into infrastructure upgrades, license costs and the like, so it's not like selling wireless data is free money for the operator.

Or alternatively they use oligopoly pricing and use profits for executive compensation, dividends and then turn around and provide jaw droopingly bad service, horribly crippled phones filled with bloat, and generally treat their customers like shit..

For each GB you download, you pay a few cents for the actual infrastructure (for the data transfer), and a lot more for marketing, and the big offices that they need, and the fancy shops in downtown main shopping streets, and... did I mention marketing? Marketing is a big one.

It's not. The speed of data transfer that our current communication infrastructure is capable off far exceeds what we (the consumers) have access to. Companies just keep it to themselves cause it increases their profit margin. Additionally they can sell the excess capacity to other "operators" who piggy back on the network of an operator with a license.

8ta gives a 10Gb option for R300, but their coverage is limited... It works well though, where I am. I got a 2Gb Vodacom line in my iPad for about R200. Mtn however costs me about R180 for 500Mb added to my phone(I do this every couple of months to keep the work emails pushed to the phone). Depends what you're looking for I guess. In any case, I have concluded that mtn is rubbish.

I sure as hell wouldn't pay 100 dollars for a 56k connection in the 48, but I can see more than a few people that I know who would contemplate a solid 3Mb connection anywhere in the mainland of the country for that price.

This is how I took the question. There is no such thing as an 'unlimited' plan at the moment, so I assumed this was all hypothetical. As a hypothetical, I also assumed this was truly unlimited, was reasonably fast (2Mb+) and had no bullshit restrictions about tethering and other nonsense. As such, it's easily worth $50-$60/month. That's a useful tool right there.

If we're talking about the way the current 'unlimited' plans work, I'll change my vote to $20. That's only useful for occasional usage at best (e.g., settling bets at the pub, posting pictures of your lunch and... whatever it is you do in farmville).

I get unlimited wireless for 5 euro (no caps or usage limits, no tethering restrictions, etc.), and the price has not changed for more than a year. Obviously I voted for the $10 or less option.

The data fee is in addition to the basic 3G service fee, which costs less than 1 euro (actually 0.66) per month plus calls/SMS at 0.04 each. It's a rare month when the bill exceeds 10 euro total for calls and data. Needless to say, the phone is mine and relatively unlocked.

I know locked, I know unlocked, but I don't know "relatively unlocked". Could you elaborate?

Unlocked by most standards - I can change service simply by changing the SIM card, so it's not locked to any provider the way many US phones are. However, I have not explored what sort of things I could do with it (get root, re-flash, change the Android version, etc.) if I were so motivated. Hence the "relatively".

I get unlimited wireless for 5 euro (no caps or usage limits, no tethering restrictions, etc.), and the price has not changed for more than a year. Obviously I voted for the $10 or less option.

The data fee is in addition to the basic 3G service fee, which costs less than 1 euro (actually 0.66) per month plus calls/SMS at 0.04 each. It's a rare month when the bill exceeds 10 euro total for calls and data. Needless to say, the phone is mine and relatively unlocked.

You are missing one thing: 3G is old tech in the US. We had unlimited plans in the $20 to $30 range back when 3G was the norm, and that was fine since 1 to 2 Mbit was the typical bandwidth. It's hard to abuse 1 to 2 Mbit. With 4G now the standard for wireless service, 30Mbit speeds are common. It's a lot easier to abuse 30Mbit, especially when common Cable or DSL internet service is still in the 6 to 10 Mbit range. So carriers are shifting accordingly, to better accommodate what is essentially a completely new service.

Comparing 3G data plans to 4G data plans is apples to oranges, they have nothing in common, except for the unfortunate fact that in the US, customers arent bothered with choosing one or the other, so they get a "Data plan" that includes both. Before long, we are going to see 3G "limited" devices sold under more aggressive pricing, but until then it's 4G or bust.

I don't see any deals as good as the Finnish one here in the UK. My contract (which was a very good deal) ends next month, so I've had a quick look at what's on offer. "Unlimited" plans are no longer offered -- anything advertised as such will kick off heavy users, so it's probably more like 5GB or something.

I don't need that though, I need about 750MB to be comfortable, about 150 minutes, and 200 texts. I can get more than that for about £10/month. I don't see anything for less than £8/month, except for some rebate-by-monthly-coupon deals (which work, but are a bit more effort).

Fixed size plans are available: that is what the carriers are switching to. Most have ultra-cheap plans around the 300MB range and then start tiers at 1GB and go up from there to 10GB or more. A typical 3G user, unless they download all day and all night and have no access to WiFi, would be hard pressed to overrun 1GB (and in fact over 90% of users don't go above 1GB). On 4G, you can burn 1GB in a matter of 10 minutes.

Everyone has a stick up their butt because at one time "unlimited wireless data" was the norm and it was even "cheap", now that the game has changed (4G is widespread) the prices are changing dramatically. Things change, that's that.

Three.co.uk does offer unlimited plans. Not that cheap - £15 month, or £25/month with tethering allowed (amusingly, their tethering block doesn't work when you tether to Linux), but you get more than those minutes and texts. One thing that's an issue is that, although the coverage is very extensive, it is terrible indoors when not close to a window - especially in basements.

You are missing one thing: 3G is old tech in the US. We had unlimited plans in the $20 to $30 range back when 3G was the norm, and that was fine since 1 to 2 Mbit was the typical bandwidth. It's hard to abuse 1 to 2 Mbit. With 4G now the standard for wireless service, 30Mbit speeds are common. It's a lot easier to abuse 30Mbit, especially when common Cable or DSL internet service is still in the 6 to 10 Mbit range. So carriers are shifting accordingly, to better accommodate what is essentially a completely new service.

Comparing 3G data plans to 4G data plans is apples to oranges, they have nothing in common, except for the unfortunate fact that in the US, customers arent bothered with choosing one or the other, so they get a "Data plan" that includes both. Before long, we are going to see 3G "limited" devices sold under more aggressive pricing, but until then it's 4G or bust.

Perhaps you missed that there are 21Mbps (13.90 euro) and 50Mbps (19.80 euro) offerings from DNA Finland [www.dna.fi] which are also unlimited (no caps, no tethering limit, etc). Whether you call them 3G or 4G is largely a matter of marketing.

no, carriers are switching to this for one reason - because it is what customers are using and therefore the way they will make the most money - texting and phone are stagnant, shrinking markets - the internet is growing. Even their basic new plan costs me more than my 3G unlimited - how do you explain that? 1 Gbit is a pathetic amount, so they recommend paying at least $10 more for 2 Gbit - that is just milking the customer in the worst way - recommending their starting data point is $60, or double what my 3G unlimited is. They charge $10 per additional device. All of this has one purpose - to take more money out of your pocket and shove it in their own.

Bandwidth isn't the reason they are doing this - they could offer throttled plans at different price points just like DSL and Cable does. In fact, Clear WiMax is 4G LTE (~the same technology~) and offers unlimited plans for about $40-50 and does just that. They just have a limited service area (my home is in it, but my work is not).

I get unlimited wireless for 5 euro (no caps or usage limits, no tethering restrictions, etc.), and the price has not changed for more than a year. Obviously I voted for the $10 or less option.

The data fee is in addition to the basic 3G service fee, which costs less than 1 euro (actually 0.66) per month plus calls/SMS at 0.04 each. It's a rare month when the bill exceeds 10 euro total for calls and data. Needless to say, the phone is mine and relatively unlocked.

Which country? Which network?

Country = Finland
Basic service = DNA Onni S [www.dna.fi]. Calls/SMS are 0.069 (not 0.04, my mistake for not having a bill in front of me).
Data addition = Laajakaista S [www.dna.fi]. And now that I checked my bill, I'm actually getting a 1 euro discount on the data service because of some sales campaign, so it's 3.90 euro instead of 4.90 euro.

If I was a real talker, I'd probably go for the 2.90 euro Onni L service which includes 100 minutes.
If I really wanted to watch streamed video on my phone, I'd go for the 9.90 euro Laajakaista M or if I was crazy enough to want HD streaming, I'd try the 15.90 euro Laajakaista L at 21Mbps (these data plans are also unlimited and have no restriction on tethering etc.).

BTW, if you try Google Translate on these pages, be warned that it sucks a little bit on Finnish to English, and the result might read like a user manual for a Korean appliance in the bad old days.

Romania, I have a 3G USB dongle with unlimited data plan which came for free. Yes, you read that right, for free. It's a bonus to the unlimited data for my Internet subscription, which, by the way, costs me 10 bucks a month. Getting the USB dongle itself was difficult because you get queued up for a couple months (they always have a shortage) but I used it plenty since I got it. I removed the SIM card from the dongle and slammed it in my laptop's 3G internal device. Works great.But in case I would have to get such a thing without any added subscription of sorts, I would pay max 30 bucks.

Europe is a lot more progressive for Internet and seems to be more competitive - I was in Romania and Germany a year ago and everyone I knew (my first cousin married a Romanian and I have family in Germany) had such a dongle and could tether any number of devices through it for no extra charge. Verizon WIRELESS (note to poll, Verizon Wireless is a separate company from Verizon - in fact, its legal name is Cellco Partnership d.b.a. Verizon Wireless, where d.b.a. = doing business as) and AT&T which just followed, they want $10 per device being dongled for 1GB per month on top of a monthly fee that depends on plan. It wouldn't surprise me if Sprint followed as well. T Mobile probably won't, but they have to offer a good plan due to having the worst band/reception.

To add insult to injury, the FCC is recommending that land lines go to tiered pricing. If this is anything close to what the wireless carriers are charging, the massive drop in internet subscribers and users will be fatal to thousands of companies. Telecommuters will start driving in to work because it is cheaper. Many companies will drop off the internet due to expense, especially once they panic after hacker attacks make some companies serve up billions of pages and they get a billion dollar bill in the mail. Human Sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! (with apologies to Ghostbusters). The FCC is so misguided here that I don't think they understand the ripple effect this will have.

My jerkwater shantytown got LTE in 2010. To be exact: Oct 19 2010. And no, I don't use it right now, though the LTE that went into service then is operated by the provider of my mobile phone. I am not really a bandwith hog, but I could, if I would. Unlimited data plans are starting around 10 € here.

For your information... Going by the average European (France, UK, Germany) population density, LTE coverage of most Metropolitan areas means like 70% of all area. There are places where the is no land between cities at all, ya know and no I am not talking about only two sister cities, I am talking about a cluster of cities... Infrastructure is way better in central Europe than the US, simply because it is needed to sustain that population density and because the population density makes it actually easy and feasible. (Same reason why you have a subway in NY but not LA.)

Well here in Estonia you get 4G with unlimited speed and no bandwidth caps for 100 eur / month. In this case they guarantee that no matter how many GB/TB you transfer they won't bug you or limit you. This is the extreme end of the spectrum. You can have (and I have) the 4G which is "unlimited" for 35 eur / month. There are no speed or bandwidth caps for the first 30GB. After that all bets are off, but there is no immediate slowdown. Last month I used 110 GB (watch a lot of Apple TV movies and downloaded a few Steam games, this month is gonna be a bitch with Steam summer sale though). Even on the last day of the month I was doing nice 30 Mbit/s download speeds (about average I can get at my location due to distance to cell tower) so no caps. When I chose the package I talked to them and they said the clause for reasonable use (i.e. up to 30 GB) is to make sure they have a handle if someone is abusing the network and it starts to impact others in the region. If you don't impact they let you hog as much as you can...

As something similar, I'd be happy if more computers (laptops, even desktops) had a built in LTE radio [1] so I could drop a SIM card in them and be off and running.

I know the US is behind the rest of the world. Heck, until the iPhone came out, people were more than content with a Motorola RAZR, regarding smartphones as toys for geeks or musts for the exec on the go. However, it is just plain not acceptable that the only thing that is increasing are fees, while the rest of the world actually has usable bandwidth on their devices.

Take Korea or Japan. Their cellphones not just are able to do the usual voice/text/data, but get TV in real time with full DVR capabilities.

Take China. While CDMA providers here refuse access to their networks unless you use a phone bought from them, one can easily use R/UIM cards (similar to SIM cards in function) and easily go from network to network. A lot of phones have dual SIM cards to make having access to multiple networks a lot easier.

Take Europe. Competition there keeps prices down, because if one provider pulls crap, one SIM change later, and that phone is now on a different network.

Hell, take Central America. A couple pesos buys you better service than hundreds of dollars buys in the US.

[1]: Pie in the sky here, but it would be even cooler if the network interface offered hardware base firewall rulesets, so even if the OS got compromised, mail wouldn't be sent out over port 25, and the IP blacklists would remain intact.

Hush now, his sarcasm was palpable. In the US we cry socialism any time the government does anything, including try to make capitalism work better. Over here we understand capitalism as something more like feudalism, and socialism as something more like satan worshipping. Obey your lord and don't worship the devil, or we'll burn you at the stake!